First of all if you find this post because you want USB to get going on Linux, than you need to know that if you use the open source varian VirtualBox USB – that does not support USB on purpose. Only the closed source version lists USB as a feature. So you have to fetch the version from www.virtualbox.org.

Secondly, there are still issues with USB on VBox in general. But there is a trivial solution for many devices if you use the latest Vbox version >3.1.2:

You need to enable the devices by adding a filter in the USB configuration menu. No device without a filter will work and all devices will be grayed out! (And the is a nice HOWTO and also)

Previously I tried all the funny tricks that you can find on the net. Nothing helped – but nowhere I found this. So I decided to write it down. I did not kow what a USB filter was and assumed that rather than enablig it was meant for disabling USB devices. Lesson learned.

Yet I was not able to enable a Canon PIXMA in that way. Not sure what the cause is. I also still have issues with DVD/CDROM (which I solve by typing “eject” in terminal). But what is nice that a Windows XP on a 64bit Ubuntu 9.10 starts in about 6 seconds inside VirtualBox (unfortunately not my system).